Gerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein)

When Fianna Fáil used the 2009 HIQA report to justify the withdrawal of emergency services from Ennis hospital, the current Minister for Health, Deputy James Reilly, rightly accused the then Government of starving smaller hospitals of resources to make them unsafe and of then producing reports to prove this and justify their closure. This is precisely what the current Government has just done.

The solution to a hospital that is unsafe is to make it safe. To decide there are no alternatives just shows a complete lack of vision and imagination. I spoke to the Roscommon hospital action group. I do not have time to tell Members what it told me; suffice it to say it challenged in great detail the figures put forward by the Minister for Health on various claims he made in the past week or so. I am sure Sinn Féin's health spokesperson, Deputy Ó Caoláin, will raise these issues again.

I want to follow the logic of what the Taoiseach is saying today. He says he accepts the HIQA recommendation in respect of Roscommon hospital. HIQA has recommended that nine other hospitals be downgraded and lose essential services. Can the Taoiseach confirm this? In the interest of telling the people the truth, can he tell us which hospitals will lose emergency services and when those services will be withdrawn? Does he not accept that what he is doing in Roscommon is what Fianna Fáil did in Louth, Ennis, Nenagh and Monaghan?

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